Baseball caps, besides being part of a baseball team's uniform, have become a mainstay of casual wear. The general shape is that of a dome nominally sized to fit the head of the wearer with a long frontal brim with an opening and size adjustment strap on the back. Hats come emblazoned with a wide variety of indicia usually on the dome portion at the front atop the brim.
The prior art includes educational games where phrases are interchangeable to teach grammar, such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,613,309 of McCloskey for interchangeable figures of speech, or as in U.S. Pat. No. 3,235,976 of Elliot for phrase building blocks. However, neither Elliot nor McCloskey describe a novelty game including apparel, such as shirts or caps, with interchangeable role playing indicia.
The prior art does not teach a baseball cap with multiple attached selectable indicia in a shape conformable to the cap itself, since the crown of the cap is dome shaped with many compound curves converging toward an apex of the cap.
Among related patents include U.S. Pat. No. 2,796,270 of Wittcoff. Wittcoff '270 describes a fedora-type hat with an internal rotating sheet, having a series of child's math problems on the sheet, which are viewable though a transparent viewing window. When the sheet is rotated, a different math problem appears. When the child looks inside the hat, the answer to the math problem appears in a corresponding interior transparent viewing window. Wittcoff '270 describes a vertically extending multi-image band that rotates within a hat crown portion that is a simple cylinder with an oval crossection. However, Wittcoff does not describe a rotatable band that is a compound curved dome, which utilizes changing tangential radii, which greatly enhances the conformability of the band within a domed crown of a baseball cap, which has an infinite number of changing radii, and which converge to an apex at the top of the domed crown.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,699,553 of Byers, et al. describes a novelty hat that has a single exterior strip band, to which are attached letters forming a word, but not interchangeable images.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,803,829 of Tscharner discloses a cap with a plurality of transparent pockets, into which pockets pictures are inserted.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,243,877 of Heyward patent describes a hat with multiple brims and multiple permanently attached logos or insignias.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,776,043 of Coleman and U.S. Pat. No. 6,519,719 of Taguchi both describe apparel, such as baseball caps, with a front VELCRO® hook and loop panel for interchangeable attachment of different athletic team logos/names, each having corresponding VELCRO® hook and loop fasteners.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,240,373 of Ahn is a hat that has a single logo but a rotatable inside ring, primarily provided for moving the beak of the cap around or for removing the crown to convert a hat into a sun visor, without a domed crown portion.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,243,377 of Ashy patent describes a hat with interchangeable images, but which are magnetically or otherwise attached one by one to the hat.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,311,322 of Lien describes a hat with an arcuate front pouch, into which is inserted one or many different trade name logos. But Lien '332 does not have an interior rotating sheet of logos.
The Tscharner '829, Heyward '877, Coleman '043, Taguchi '779 and Ashy '377 patents, teach hats with separate attachments of indicia by corresponding VELCRO® or magnetic fasteners. However, these references actually do not teach the use of a band with a plurality of indicia, rotatable within a domed cap crown with an infinite number of converging tangential radii forming a compound curved dome, that would overcome the problems associated with the vertically extending indicia band of the prior art of Wittcoff '270 with a band with vertically extending wall that is not a compound curve, which hinders the effectiveness of the indicia band of Wittcoff '270 to rotate within a domed crown of a baseball cap.
Moreover, the separately attached logos of Tscharner '829, Heyward '877, Coleman '043, Taguchi '779 and Ashy '877 have the detrimental effects of needing to be separately attached removed individually.
To that end, the aforementioned prior art hats with multiple indicia are either directed to a band with a vertically extending wall with multiple images which does not rotate within a dome, or where each image must be separately removed or attached.